Live Your Unlived Life – On Hearing About the Death of a Colleague

Yesterday, I learned about the death of a colleague. A young woman, with children, someone I’d met and noticed for her warmth, ambition and desire to make a difference in the lives of others.

In the last many weeks, I had begun to be grateful that I am still alive. This was not a morbid thought, simply a sense of the blessing, because others don’t always get to be my age, and I am not particularly old.

But if you were taken by death at 48, 58 or 63, I am still older. And for that I am grateful.

Last week a surgeon told me that I didn’t have to return for a colonoscopy for 10 years. I was ecstatic and so was he. Pain in the butt procedure in every possible sense of that phrase.

And so today, when this young woman’s picture stared back at me again on Facebook, I was also reminded that once, a long, long time ago, when I was dreaming about all the things I would do as a grown woman, there always seemed to be more time to get there.

Maybe next year. Maybe this year – but always without an actual plan, fizzled efforts, and often with distractions, dramas and procrastination.

One life event could get everything sidetracked. For decades.

If you believe that you have time to wait before you love yourself fiercely enough to do the one thing that has always mattered, love yourself enough today.

Find that inner conversation with the loving wise one in you, and let her hold your hand and lead you to the white board.

Begin.

Begin anywhere.

But begin.

So today, in appreciation for reminders and with sadness for such a loss, take the love you have for your smallest and dearest animal, sibling or friend, and see how you can guide yourself toward doing that one precious thing that you’ve been dreaming about all your life.

Live your unlived life.

I believe Milena Cerin would smile to see you doing that and she would cheer you on.